Sundance Movies
Brick
Whiplash
In honor of Sundance this week, I decided to view two highly-revered films that made their premieres at this famous festival. Founded by Robert Redford in 1978, Sundance is the place where so many directors and writers and creators first gain exposure—it is one of the most important if not the most impactful film festival to exist. I could’ve taken this in so many directions, given the crazy amount of iconic films that premiered at this famous film fest, and I’ve already watched two Sundance films on Double Feature Thursday apparently: Memento and Blood Simple. And as it would turn out, my favorite movie of all time, Heathers, also premiered at Sundance. I was so tempted watch Heathers for the billionth time, but instead I indulged in a different dark high school crime story, Rian Johnson’s first film Brick. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as the protagonist of this neo-noir thriller with secretive, stylish, scheming, drug-dealing high schoolers much like the ones at Euphoria High but instead of talking like Bad Bhabie, all the kids here talked like Phillip Marlowe and Sam Spade and I really dug it. The music and dialogue and dialect was incredibly 1940s, but the fashion and aesthetic was undeniably early 2000s. When Brendan’s (JGL) newly ex girlfriend goes missing, he must infiltrate an underground network of teenage drug dealers to find out the truth. No shade but Joseph Gordon-Levitt isn't the most compelling leading man to me, I think his career trajectory has been a bit like Selena Gomez’: lovable child stardom that resulted in a high velocity adult acting career that has made a very low impact. However, Brick may have been his best performance and his cutest-looking movie. Idk the floppy hair and glasses just did it for me but that wasn’t the only pleasant surprise, he really gave a compelling performance here. Rarely have more modern neo-noirs impressed me, Under the Silver Lake certainly tried but this one was fully cooked. It was filmed in San Clemente, the small Orange County town where Rian Johnson grew up (and where I saw My Morning Jacket and Pearl Jam a few months ago lol). With a low-budget and a fresh-out-of-film-school script, Brick was raw and new and authentic in every respect—copying certain crime fiction tropes but also inventing entirely new ones. It didn’t quite achieve a Heathers-level of iconic (an impossibly high bar) but its script was full of phenomenal lines. It was somehow both gritty and goofy to me, fun at unexpected times and genuinely suspenseful at others. It dragged in some moments but ultimately kept me guessing until the end. At the risk of spoiling all of the fun, I’ll keep my review short, but Rian Johnson knows how to do a whodunnit okay? Brick was full of tension, but Whiplash, another one-named title by another skilled writer-director that’s centered around a young man pushed to the brink, took that tension and turned it up to eleven. Damien Chazelle’s 2014 film Whiplash was a stressful, chaotic, frustrating, yet somehow a very satisfying film. To call a film starring Miles Teller satisfying confused me even as I typed it but here he was really trying the hardest I’ve ever seen him try. He stars as Andrew, an obsessively ambitious drummer who is selected to play in an elite and challenging competitive ensemble band. J.K. Simmons, who quite frankly always kills it, plays the terrifying and demanding instructor Fletcher, whose methods can only be described as abusive. J.K. Simmons is known for effortlessly dishing out expert roasts which is why I thought it was so lame that so many of the insults relied upon homophobia, when there’s literally million other actual insults you could throw at Miles Teller. I mean just look at that guy. He’s easily got one of the most punchable faces in Hollywood. Drummers are integral to every song they’re used on, keeping the pace and maintaining the heartbeat of the band, and it was impressive to see Miles actually keep up. He was at his best when he was drumming the shit out of those drums, and was at his most interesting in his pursuit of being one of the greats. Getting to know him, from what little we get, is mostly done through his brief encounters with his dad Paul Reiser at the movies, and his brief relationship with Supergirl (Melissa Benoist). I would say this romantic relationship was like Rooney Mara and Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network but they didn’t even have that much chemistry. With War Dogs I didn’t blame his and Ana De Armas’ lack of chemistry on solely upon Miles: I thought maybe some of it had to do with the script, but now I’m not so sure. All I’m saying is I’ve got nothing against Miles Teller but I’ve got nothing for him either. Him and J.K. Simmons had great chemistry, on the other hand, that bordered levels of, dare I say, sexually masochistic? Even as Andrew’s fingers and hands bled, even as his sweat coated each set of drums, even after enduring hours and hours of criticism from Fletcher, Andrew couldn’t get enough. This was loosely based on writer-director Damien Chazelle’s experience in high school band, which is kind of interesting, but the imdb fun facts page about this movie was really lacking severely. I appreciated this film’s dedication to showing how arduous being a musician is. I hardly know anything about the pains of being a competitive musician, but those shots of complicated-looking sheet music really brought me back to my choir competition days. 😳 Chazelle also did a good job of expressing the doubt and underestimating on the side of the non-creatives in Andrew’s family. When you’re good at something, it really does look easy to those on the outside, but Andrew’s journey was full of intense, immense effort that took a physical and mental toll. Ultimately Whiplash felt like a story about addiction, as we watched him suffer and labor and sweat and bleed for the thing he loved. It was compelling, and the Miles Teller of it all was only mildly off-putting. I hope that one day, I get to travel to Utah, cover Sundance Film Festival for some major publication, and, most importantly, visit the sights from another gripping and chilling piece of media: The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
